Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara has approved a probe of journalist-activist Eli Tzipori for incitement against witness Hadas Klein in relation to Case 1000, the Illegal Gifts Affair, against former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Tzipori is expected to be summoned by the police for questioning in the coming days.
While Klein was testifying at the Netanyahu trial, Tzipori, one of a dozen or so journalists who regularly attends, not only verbally accosted her but also published her address and a photo of her house online.
Tzipori, who has more than 44,000 followers on Twitter, spent most of his three decades as a journalist with Globes, but was fired two years ago for controversial statements regarding the Netanyahu case.
For the last two years, Tzipori wrote a periodic column for Maariv. However, that newspaper also recently fired him after, according to Tzipori, he refused to publicly attack other Maariv columnists whom he viewed as unfairly biased against Netanyahu.
Over the trial’s two years, Tzipori has also been involved in verbal altercations with prosecutors, other witnesses and occasionally other journalists with his mantra being that Netanyahu has been unfairly targeted.It is rare that journalists are probed for their work, and it appeared that even the investigation approved by Baharav-Miara would be very narrowly tailored to Tzipori’s publication of where Klein lives under circumstances of incitement that could endanger her.
Klein's backgroundKlein has repeatedly complained of a tidal wave of threats since she testified against Netanyahu.
She is one of the key witnesses in Case 1000 because she worked closely with billionaires Arnon Milchan and James Packer, as well as with Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu himself.
This makes Klein uniquely stationed to describe whether Milchan and Packer gave gifts to the Netanyahus under pressure, which could lead to a conviction of Netanyahu for breach of trust, or based purely on friendship.
According to Klein, the Netanyahus demanded extremely expensive gifts on a regular and constant basis in a way that was inconsistent with a relationship based merely on friendship.